- The Guardian
- Issue #2168
So you’ve heard about ‘Taco trades’? Taco stands for Trump Always Chickens Out. A Taco Trade is when a stockbroker bets on US President Donald Trump backing down from one of his melodramatic threats.
Australia has something similar. Perhaps we could call it LABD, for Labor Always Backs Down. Where Trump is bombastic on tariffs but backs down under pressure, the Labor government always backs down from good ideas. Too harsh? Let’s look at some examples.
Under Bill Shorten, Labor went into an election promising to make negative gearing slightly less of a rort. They also thought they were on a winner with the idea of ending cash refunds for dividend imputation (look it up – basically free money if you own shares and don’t have taxable income). One narrow election loss later and Labor won’t touch either policy with a barge pole.
Unfair, you say? That was after they lost an election, and everybody knows you can’t do anything if you don’t have power. Certainly that’s a Labor mantra.
Well, then, lets look at Labor after they won an election with a massive majority. Now that they’ve got power, what have they done with it?
On the environment, the ALP has approved coal mine and gas field extensions like there’s no tomorrow. They also watered down plans for an environmental regulator with some power to keep the West Australian government and its donors happy.
On tax, again, Labor has made some of the worst business lobbies happy by backing down on plans to put higher taxes on very high super balances. The plan was to end tax breaks on super balances of over $3 million. After a massive media campaign predicated on the right of the well-off to use superannuation to make their kids rich too, Labor backed down. As economics writer Greg Jericho said “The reason why we don’t have free dental in Medicare is because we subsidise the inheritance of the wealthiest people in Australia.” Treasurer Jim Chalmers, asked about dental in Medicare, said that “we’ve got to make sure that we can afford it.” That’s something Labor doesn’t say about AUKUS or subsidising the rich with the taxes of working people.
Take gambling. Australians lose more money on gambling per head of population than anywhere else on earth. We have more poker machines per head than any other country. This isn’t just a fun choice, it causes massive social problems. Labor had a careful report with recommendations on limiting the impact of gambling, from a respected Labor figure, the late MP Peta Murphy, who said that “Australians are the biggest losers in the world when it comes to gambling.” Murphy recommended phasing out the tsunami of gambling ads that Australian sports lovers and their kids face.
Labor backed down. Albanese, implied that the ban was about banning friendly bets between friends. With a 90-seat majority, a whopping election victory behind him, community goodwill (most people can’t stand the betting ads) and bipartisan support, he backed down.
The easy diagnosis is that Labor needs to find a spine and/or some principles. That would be nice, and it’s as far as a lot of centre-left commentary goes. However, Labor “pragmatists” never tire of telling people that Labor tried having principles, most notably under the Whitlam government. Gough Whitlam was sacked 50 years ago this year, and the lesson Labor has learned from this is that there’s no such thing as too much backing down.
Rather than wishing we had a Labor government that didn’t back down, what we need is a different system. The pressures from donors and big money that make Labor so prone to backing down are pressures that will operate on any party that forms government under the system Australia has now.
What this country needs is socialism, a government run by the workers who produce the country’s wealth.
